The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel (19 page)

‘What do you think happened to Julia?’ I asked. ‘How do you explain what she did?’

‘I really don’t know,’ Alison said. Suddenly, she looked drawn and tired. All her liveliness and energy appeared to have evaporated into thin air. She listlessly folded and unfolded her napkin, and then folded and unfolded her legs. ‘I mean, I’ve thought about it a lot, obviously. I was totally shocked when the news came out, utterly shaken. When someone you knew and very much liked does something like that, I don’t know, it really affects you. But even today I find it impossible to reconcile my memories of Julia with what I’ve heard and read about her. It’s like we’re talking about two completely different people. I remember her as warm, funny, caring and engaged. Very serious and intense about certain political issues, yes, but, you know, in a completely reasonable way. Most of what she said made a lot of sense to me, and to everyone else in our class, too.’

Alison finished her wine. ‘The only explanation I can think of is that someone must have corrupted her – that she met someone on her travels, someone evil, someone who messed with her head. Perhaps it was that Chris guy. I don’t know. But I know for sure that the person I met in Edinburgh was neither evil nor a sociopath. Far from it.’

When we left the restaurant, Alison accompanied me to the train station, where we hugged goodbye. I turned around just before boarding the train and saw her still standing there, behind the gates, waving.

XIII

Who was this woman? The more I learned about Julia, the blurrier my image of her became. This was strange – usually, the opposite was the case. In the course of all the previous biographies I had worked on, the pieces of my subjects’ personality puzzles gradually began to merge into a bigger picture, until they formed a coherent whole. It always took patience, and hard work – it was never an easy process – but at some point there was always
something
I could use, some theory that emerged organically, some kind of pattern of cause and effect. But not in this case. I was beginning to worry about how to reconcile these different visions of Julia – I would have to take sides at some point. Had Julia been seduced and corrupted by someone, as Amy, Alison and her father seemed to think? Was she simply evil, as Jonathan suggested? Had her character been spoiled and damaged by bad parenting, as her mother believed? Or was there a cold, perhaps even sociopathic streak in her personality?

What is more, I found myself questioning the ways in which the people I had interviewed interpreted Julia’s actions. They appeared to me such unreliable narrators, all of them, blindly adoring or else aggrieved and resentful. But most disturbingly, listening to their stories, even the ones that were supposed to cast Julia in a bad light, I had caught myself more than once thinking that I could actually see Julia’s point.

Very soon, I would have to make a decision about what line of argument I was to adopt – otherwise, without a strong story, I knew you would send it all back, studded with the piercing comments in Bordeaux-coloured ink for which you are so famous, and lose faith in me completely. And without your support, George, I may as well give up.

Readers of biographies want above all a sound narrative that imposes meaning on the seeming chaos of life. They don’t like unresolved ambiguities. They expect biographers to be their spirit guides in the murky territory of character and motivation. But how was I to accomplish this, given that my subject wouldn’t let me speak to her, that there were no letters, diaries or other textual traces of her psychological and intellectual development, and that everyone I had interviewed so far seemed to have very different opinions on Julia’s true character? I wished Mia Meyerowitz would get back to me – Alison’s description of her sounded intriguing. I kept thinking that she must have some interesting thoughts on the case. I Googled her and found out that she was an Associate Professor of Queer and Gender Studies in Berkeley, California. She sounded like she was the only person so far who even came close to being Julia’s intellectual match. I sent her a follow-up email, urging her once again to get in touch.

Did Julia really mean any of the things she said to Alison, to Mia and in class, I wondered, or had she just been sharpening her rhetorical skills, exploring how far her verbal powers would take her, and whether anyone had the ability and the guts to stop her? Was Julia just pulling the wings off her opponents out of boredom, or did she get some kind of pleasure from watching them suffer?

When I got back late that evening from my trip to Canterbury I felt nostalgic for my childhood. I miss my parents so much that sometimes the pain completely overwhelms me. I took out a box of old letters and photographs. There were pictures of them standing proudly hand in hand in front of our cottage; pictures of Amanda and me playing in the orchard; pictures of our first school days; and of family holidays in Brittany and Cornwall. While I browsed, I also came across the letter you wrote me after we broke up, the first time. I must have read it a million times. I still think about it, often, in fact, and whether there is any truth to your allegations. I still haven’t quite made up my mind. You called me an enjoyment-averse workaholic, a commitment-phobic coward, stubbornly determined to reject the only things that really mattered in life – intimacy and love. You called me cold. An ‘arctic intellectualizer’ who sent shivers down your spine, a ‘pathological run-away bride’ with a ‘refrigerator mind that chill-blasts the life out of all things of beauty’ – these were your very words. People like me, you wrote, are the worst: cheating refuseniks, too afraid to embrace love when it stares them right in the face. We, you prophesied, will be left with nothing in the end. We’re the ones dying alone and afraid in the dark, with the bitter taste of regret in our pinched mouths.

I know you wrote this in anger, and you have apologized for it. But I am still not sure which parts of it you really meant, and which ones were simply designed to hurt me. I do rather hope you did (and do) not actually think of me that way. Apart from your apology for your ‘very upset and childish outburst’, and your assertion that you still hoped we could continue to work with each other as before and remain good friends, which followed (in writing and with flowers) one week after the letter, we never spoke about it again. Your accusations continued to haunt me, though. They still do.

Thinking back, now, remembering the good bits in what we had, I find it difficult to understand what it was exactly that drove me to drop you. We saw eye to eye on almost everything; you made me laugh and you made me relax; we had so much
fun
together. Do you remember how often we giggled? You would only have to raise one of your eyebrows, which always made you look like Mephisto, and I would crack up. I loved your wit and your curiosity and your caustic comments on things you didn’t like, and your unruly battleship-grey hair; your slow dark laughter that reached its climax in such a leisurely manner, like cumbersome Pacific waves crashing on the shore. I loved your cinnamon scent and your crankiness. We were so good together, George. I think we brought out the best in each other. I still miss you and me, how we were back then.

I don’t know what changed between us, and when, and why – these things happen so gradually. I only know that at some point, towards the end of our first liaison, your laughter no longer reminded me of the sea-shore but just struck me as too loud. And the enchanting eccentricity of your crankiness had, in my mind, been transformed into moodiness and wearisome petulance. But that wasn’t it, of course. Above all, I felt increasingly stifled by your expectations; I felt you were beginning to eat too much into my time, distracting me from my work. You constantly wanted us to
do
things – to go to exhibitions, to see films, to explore new restaurants, to attend dinner parties; you wanted me to meet your mother (which I did, and, as you know, I didn’t like her much and neither did she take to me) and all your friends, of which you had so many, far too many for my liking – you always were much more gregarious than me. You expected me to take five days off around your forty-fifth birthday (just like that – two weeks before I had to submit a manuscript) to explore your favourite Parisian galleries and cafés with you, and you were angry and upset when I declined. Although you worked in publishing yourself, you never quite understood that writing takes time and discipline and real commitment. Every time I had to work evenings and weekends, you considered it a personal insult. You were relentless. And the more you asked and pressed me to do things with you, the more often I had to say no, which made me feel guilty and you unloved. I became irritable; you became morose. One day, I woke up and just knew it wouldn’t work.

Thinking about all of this upset me so that after dinner, rather than returning to my cell, I spent some time in the TV room, just to avoid being on my own with all these thoughts. Anyway. I should move on; it is getting late. Towards the end of September, I found another email waiting in my inbox. Mia Meyerowitz had responded to my second message, in which I had told her that Alison had reached out to me and that her name had come up in her account, and asked again whether she could share some of her thoughts on Julia. I added some flattery around the edges, too, which tends to work with a surprisingly large number of people, especially with academics. But evidently not this time – my heart sank when I saw how short her message was. This is what she wrote:

Dear Clare,

Thank you for getting in touch and for your kind words. You asked me to describe my impression of Julia White’s character based on our shared time in Edinburgh, and I am happy to comply with your request. In fact, I can do so swiftly and succinctly: Julia White is a psychotic of the first order, and I sincerely hope that she will rot in prison for the rest of her life. I am not sure how (and why) you are planning to write an entire book about this person; the analysis of socio-pathology is best left to those properly trained to do so. What is more, it is, ultimately, not a very interesting subject.

I wish you the best of luck with your endeavour in any case.

Yours,

Mia

Mia was unfortunately not prepared to elaborate further on her statement.

XIV

Whenever I’m alone these days, the guilt I feel about what I have done becomes almost unbearable. I have come to fear being on my own so much that I look forward to the daily outings, headcounts and chores now – they provide some respite from my troubling memories. Since last week, I have had to work between breakfast and lunch, and from two to five except on days when I have visiting rights. I was able to choose between service in the kitchen, the laundrette, or the workshop. I chose the latter. I always liked making things with my hands. With my very first pay cheque, I bought myself an electric screwdriver and a set of sturdy stainless steel tools. I always thought it important that I should be able to fix things that needed fixing on my own – I don’t like being dependent on others. I taught myself a whole range of things, and I can fit shower curtain rails and ceiling lamps, bleed radiators and re-pressurize boilers, and I am an expert assembler of all kinds of Ikea furniture.

In the workshop, we’re supervised by a taciturn Asian man with a saffron-coloured turban, which jars oddly with his blue uniform. He barely ever speaks, and appears to be working on an elaborate and really rather impressive-looking wooden shrine. We inmates either have to repair small electrical appliances, or else assemble simple pinewood furniture: bedside and sofa tables, footstools, chairs and flower stands. They are not too bad looking, actually. Each day, I find a new task on my workbench, along with a manual and a set of tools, the contents of which the guard controls rigorously to make sure nobody steals anything that could be used as a weapon. There are about twenty other women in the workshop to which I have been assigned. They all seem quite friendly. I have come to look forward to the hours I spend there. Usually, the radio is on, or else we talk or just work in silence. It’s good to have something to do, and it’s good to be able to chat to others. I’m slowly re-learning how to do that. Here, things are really peaceful, possibly because they only allow mentally stable inmates near the tools and machinery. I suppose it is a compliment that I have been classified as one of them.

I have begun to pay more attention to what is happening around me here. Sarah – the shy new girl with the shaking hands – never says a word, but she always seeks my company. During meals, she sits next to me, very close, like a freezing bird in need of warmth. I try to get her to talk a little, but apart from her name I haven’t yet managed to get much out of her. She worries me – she hardly eats anything and her skin is a sickly shade of yellow, like a fading bruise. Her hair looks medieval, as though she chopped it off herself in a moment of despair or self-punishment, and her dark eyes are moist and feverish.

I also found out more about the black woman I mentioned. One of the guards told me that her name is Amelia and that she used to be a teacher. Four years ago, she apparently smashed her husband’s brain to pulp. It’s very hard to believe – she has such a kind, wise face. She’s the only other person who frequents the library, and now, whenever she sees me sitting in my usual place by the small window, reading the papers, she acknowledges my presence with a short nod. Yesterday, she even smiled. I smiled right back at her. Perhaps, one day, we’ll actually speak to each other. I would love to hear her story.

But time is precious – even more so now that I work most days. Having read Alison’s account, it became obvious to me that I had to find the man who called himself Chris. Julia’s parents, moreover, had also mentioned a male friend, whom Julia had occasionally referred to in the postcards she sent them from the various countries in South-East Asia and Latin America that she had visited on her trip. From her parents’ and Amy’s remarks, I also gathered that Julia returned to the UK on her own, and that she never mentioned her travelling companion again. Presumably she and Chris had fallen out at some point during their journey.